Browsing All posts tagged under »Martinsburg West Virginia«

By far, one of my favorite blogging experiences of the Sesqui was posting David Hunter Strother’s accounts of the early war (before he joined the Union army), in real time. It should be no surprise, therefore, that I often find myself returning to Strother for the rich content he left behind. Interestingly, in addition to […]

It’s ironic, but today is the 150th anniversary of an event that is unique… it’s about fathers… and it happens to fall on Father’s Day. That said, I wish I could say it will leave you with a warm feeling, but… June 15, 1864 was a Wednesday. Of that day, David Hunter Strother remembered Early […]

I restrained myself from titling this “Party like it’s 1812”, so, for that you can be thankful… but since it’s Halloween week… It should come as no surprise that I came upon this little piece of history about Nimrod Hughes… the man who offered a prediction of the end of the world… well, sorta… he […]

It might be hard to believe, but a decade ago, I probably wouldn’t have given it a second thought. Back then, it was clear to me… the Shenandoah Valley was Confederate and, any effort made by Confederates here was to rid “Yankees” from it. The understanding being that “Yankees” meant anyone who came in, from […]

A couple of years ago there was a good article in The Journal (Martinsburg, W.V.), in which postwar (1880s, actually) efforts by Christian Frederick Laise were part of the focus. Berkeley County has an African-American area listed in the National Register. After their freedom at the end of the Civil War, many former slaves had […]

Sometime in the 1980s, I received a photocopy of a picture (ca. 1887-89) from one of my distant cousins. It showed three men (and a dog & horse) standing in front of a C.C. Moore bottling wagon. I took it that the three men were my third great grandfather, Cyrus S. Moore, and my gg […]

Off topic… sorta, but… In the last week, I’ve scored three major pieces on Ebay; at least “major” to me, personally. All three have to do with my Moore family, specifically rooted in my third great grandfather (the same one I mentioned in the blog post the other day) or his sons. The first piece […]

My attention to the details of his life just weren’t there… it seemed they didn’t need to be… as a father-in-law to one of my distant uncles, John William Neer was an indirect link in the family tree… and, at one time, I knew nothing of his life, other than that indirect connection. Over time, […]

It’s just one example of what likely occurred in many a Virginia household, in 1861, and even later. Yet, popular contemporary “memory” of Virginia, at war on the side of the Southern Confederacy, seems to have no, or very little “recollection” of such instances. The following comes to us via the August 7, 1861 issue […]